Cherish - The Truth

Atlanta-based girl group Cherish first hit the big time in 2006 with "Do It To It," the irresistibly catchy first single from their debut album, Unappreciated. And on their second album, The Truth (released in the U.S. on May 13, 2008), the quartet try proving they're no one-hit wonder. The Truth is packed with plenty of ear candy, tailor-made for young ladies in their teens and early 20s. The songs, much like those on Unappreciated, are sugary pop-R&B tunes that are heavy on style, light on substance. On their first album, the girls showed potential, but on their second, they settle for mediocrity.

One of the great things about Cherish is that they fill a void in today's marketplace when it comes to female R&B groups. Destiny's Child, TLC, Xscape, Total 702 and many more have all either disbanded or fallen off the map. So Cherish and Danity Kane are two of the few R&B-leaning girl groups out there. But unfortunately, neither group has much depth or vocal firepower in their music.

Cherish's songs, like "Killa" (about a dude who's a real heartbreaker) and "Framed Out" (an ode to shopping and materialism) are simplistically catchy songs, however their appeal isn't the ordinary-at-best singing. Instead, it's the various producers, Don Vito and others, who make this a worthwhile album. The album peaks with the aforementioned fast-paced hip-hop songs, but when the girls try mid-tempo tracks and ballads, such as the cliched heartbreak song "Amnesia," they wind up way out of their depth, and their glaring weaknesses as vocalists become very apparent.

One exception to the truism about poorly-sung slower-paced songs is "Love Sick," a dark, angry song about a woman being happy that the man who broke her heart is now himself lonely and broken-hearted. It's this kind of honest, raw emotion that's a refreshing change of pace on an album of otherwise superficial love songs and party tracks. But superficial is the album's mainstay and bread and butter, so if you're looking for beat-oriented pop-R&B that's fun to dance to and easy on the ears, The Truth shall set you free. But anyone over the age of say, 25, probably won't find more than a couple of cheap thrills here and there.